As the Prospect Park Youth Advocates stare longingly at the changing leaves outside their classroom windows, daydreaming of a car-free Prospect Park, we begin to reflect on a summer of success.

This summer, four high school students hijacked and revolutionized Transportation Alternatives' historic campaign for a Car-Free Prospect Park.

This summer, three park-side members of the New York City Council rallied for a car-free Prospect Park, and wrote the Mayor in support of a green, safe, healthy, car-free place for young Brooklynites to play.

This summer, Mayor Bloomberg, for the first time in his near eight years in office, said that the City should look into making Prospect Park car-free. "It would be great if we could keep cars out of all parks," he said.

The day of our rally was a great day; one of the best. Our big event finally happened, the rally at City Hall. All our efforts and dreams were poured into this rally pot. Tension and static were in the air; for it was the day we would bring it to Bloomberg. We began the march at the Brooklyn Bridge (Brooklyn side, home sweet home). We were accompanied by few of my friends from Brooklyn Academy for Science and the Environment, plus students from Freedom Academy High School, Edward R. Murrow High School and ACORN Community High School, the phenomenal Brooklyn Steppers Marching Band and the powerful T.A. staff.

I had the best experience as a Prospect Park Youth Advocate, working with Transportation Alternatives. I thought it would be a great idea to get involved with the campaign and have a safe, healthy, car-free park. At the beginning of this summer, I thought this issue interested many citizens, but after an entire summer of speaking with the users of Prospect Park, I know now totally that the people of Brooklyn, and most especially young people like myself, want a car-free park. But I was thrilled that out of so many applicants, four interns were chosen and I was one of them. This campaign seemed extremely interesting; it worked from the bottom-up, from the youth to the adults to the politicians, in a way different from all of the other politics I have know, and it was totally run by my very motivated fellow interns. We worked very hard to get done our jobs very well. The best part was this was all done by us! We had an awesome supervisor who helped and guided us to the right direction and we accomplished something -- four teens absolutely did something huge.

This summer as a Youth Advocate has been an amazing new learning experience. First and foremost, I learned the importance of leadership. Nothing could have happened without someone taking charge, helping us make plans, and insisting we set goals. Jessie, our irreplaceable supervisor and friend, has been a pivotal part of our developing a campaign. She taught us the hardships of making change, but also the nobility of doing work to better the community. She put together the details of our campaign activities for a car-free Prospect Park while allowing us to make decisions based on what we think would work.